Duterte has received widespread censure in the west for failing to curtail the killed and address activists allegations of systematic, state-sponsored slayings by police of drug users and merchants, which the authorities reject.

Senator Alan Peter Cayetano said there had been 11,000 to 16,000 murders per year under previous administrations. He told a change in the definition of extrajudicial killings by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights and other critics of Dutertes policies had deceived the public.

There is no new wave of killings in the Philippines, merely a political tactic of changing definitions, Cayetano told a UN review in Geneva of the Philippines human rights record.

Make no mistake, any demise or killing is one too much. However, there is a deliberate attempt to include all homicides as EJKs[ extrajudicial killings] or murders related to the campaign against criminality and illegal drugs, and that this organization is state-sponsored, which is simply not true.

Any such demise was presumed legitimate under the law, but it was automatically analyse, and Duterte had a zero tolerance policy towards abuse between police forces power, Cayetano said.

Epimaco Densing, aide secretary of the department of the interior, told Reuters that 236 police officer had been suspended and is currently under investigation and about 17 had been dismissed from their jobs and jailed.

Philippine authorities say police have only killed in self-defence during anti-drugs procedures. They say the thousands of mysterious slayings of drug users are the work of vigilantes or rival narcotics gangs.

That is rejected by human rights groups, who say most of those murders followed the same pattern and allege they were carried out by police or hired assassins, while executings were often presented during police murders in self-defence.

The governments denial and deflection of criticism displays it has no intention of complying with its international obligations, told John Fisher, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch.

The UN scrutiny is likely to add to pressure on Duterte. The authorities strongly spurn allegations of wrongdoing.

Cayetano told the council public opinion had been swayed by alternative realities spread by critics of Duterte.